24/05/09 22:57 / News / General Status Update

Making progress with the project now and then... It's shaping up to be a really good update, but I won't be done for a while I expect.
In the mean time, I've made a small website template called Idle Entity Lite, which is based on much the same principles as Idle Entity 5, except it doesn't require a MySQL database. The idea is that it can be used for small websites that need some flexibility, but are too small to be worth using a CMS like iE5. It can still utilise the same scripts as iE5, but won't have the modules. Essentially, the pages are all in files of their own, so a novice website builder can easily make a website with some minor dynamic content without having to delve into PHP.
Or as appropriate for stuff I'm doing at work, you can simply have a ready website in about half an hour.
Will post a demo of Idle Entity Lite as soon as I've finished the polish on it.

01/06/09 20:43 / Blog / Attack of the Mac Clones

I have decided to make known my opinion on Mac Clones like Pystar, based on the recent news of Pystar declaring imminent bankruptcy and the new Quo Computer folks popping up in a retail outlet no less.
There's two main angles on this argument, the legal aspect, and the practicality aspect. Legally speaking, it's stated at the beginning of the second part of the OS X license agreement that you may not install OS X on a non-apple labelled computer. Some hippie-liberals probably call this anti-competetive behaviour, but you could liken this to walking up to Sony and demanding that you should be able to play a Sony Entertainment game on an Xbox.
One of the Cloners (PearC, the german guys) counter this argument by saying that the EULA is invalid because it can't be read before purchasing the software. This is plain stupidity, because I googled "OS X license agreement" and the top hit was, funnily enough, the OS X license agreement, available free to view on the apple website. So that's their legal defence out the window.
Apple are also suing these cloners on account of copyright infringement, which is true on account that the cloners are building systems designed to be used as macintosh computers. It's kind of academic when they already have the EULA ammunition, but does lead nicely onto the practicality aspect of hackintoshes.
The thing that most Apple Adversaries can't get their head around is the Apple logic way of thinking. With Macs, it's all about the experience of the computer as a whole. It doesn't matter what computer you run windows on, but with OS X, the software and the hardware go hand in hand. When you look at OS X on it's own, it's not terribly remarkable, and Apple hardware even less so, but when the two come together, it all makes sense, from the automatic backlight and keyboard brightness to the way an iPod talks to all your applications on a Mac. You quite simply can't get the same experience from a PC, or more importantly, from a hackintosh.
Apple have enough trouble trying to get this message over to users, they've got their It Just Works thing, an entire campaign of TV adverts, and all kinds of subliminal messages- and then some snot nosed company comes along and sells a hackintosh to an unsuspecting user who wants to try out OS X before buying a Big Mac. This user is not going to get the Mac experience. They're not going to see the big picture, and in all probability, fail to see why they should spend £800+ on a mac because their hackintosh has utterly failed to wow them. So you see, Apple aren't just trying to bogart their market, they're trying to protect their product from cheap knock-offs.
Despite this, I've got no beef with home-brew hackintoshes. If I bought a netbook, I'd definitely be tempted to install OS X on it, and I'd understand the limitations, and how it'll never give me quite the same warm fuzzy feeling that my MacBook Pro does. The people who buy mac clones will not know this difference, and their mislead opinion will damage the Macintosh image. Unfortunately, they're going to ruin it for everyone, because ultimately, to solve this problem once and for all, Apple's obvious choice is to fit TPM chips to Macs. For those of you who don't know, the Trusted Platform Module is an invention of hate and fascism, and in a nutshell will allow software to decide if it can be installed on a computer, and vice versa. So Apple fit Macs with a TPM chip, and then all new versions of Mac OS will require the code in the Chip to run. Thus the Mac Clones will be out of luck, but so will power users who want to harmlessly use OS X on a Netbook or something similar.
Any kind of license validation like TPM is very anti-apple. They hate it with a passion, hence why OS X doesn't have a license key, but TPM is the bit red killswitch for Mac Clones, and Apple have, in all probability, got the schematics for TPM-enabled macs already drawn up and ready.

So a message to all the Mac Cloners: Stop it now. You might think you're being liberal, but you're selling cheap knock-offs. You're about to spoil it for everyone by forcing Apple to do things we'll all regret, and then the very people you're trying to liberate OS X to will be even further away from OS X.

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